Today In Wrestling History- August 25th

1977 – Hulk Hogan made his professional debut as ‘The Super Destroyer’

2012 – WWE debuted ‘Saturday Morning Slam’. This was the 1st WWE show exclusively aimed at children

Events

In 2002, WWE SummerSlam, held the Nassau Veterans Memorial Coliseum, in Uniondale, New York. With an attendance of 14,797. It saw the final defense of the WWE Undisputed Title & the 1st match for Shawn Michaels since Wrestlemania XIV in 1998:

1991 – Sting defeated Steve Austin in the final of a tournament to win the vacant NWA United States Title

1999 – Mitsuharu Misawa & Yoshinari Ogawa defeated NO FEAR (Takao Omori & Yoshihiro Takayama) to win the AJPW Unified World Tag Team Titles and the AJPW All Asia Tag Team Titles. The All Asia titles were vacated soon after the match

Also, today would have been the birthday of 22-time WWF Hardcore Champion Crash Holly (43)

In Memoriam

On this day in 2005, the wrestling world lost one-time WWF Tag Team Champion Ed ‘Moondog King’ White at the age of 56. White began his adult life at work on the Great Lakes boats before being recruited by Ontario promoter, Larry Kasaboski in 1972. He established himself as a tag team wrestler, winning the Canadian International Tag Titles before moving to the WWF to compete as Moondog King, a caveman-type gimmick. Here, he won a further Tag Team Title before being forced to give up his share after he was denied re-entry to the USA. Now competing back in Canada, White won a further four championships before becoming semi-retired to start a political career. He twice ran for office but was unsuccessful on both occasions. By the 2000′s, his health was in decline; he was suffering from Bell’s Palsy and had had two heart attacks. In December 2004, his taxi crashed and his injuries saw him put on life support, from which he would not recover